The GrQ?'daddy Of Troublesome Just before the turn of this century an eighty-year old mountaineer walked twenty-two miles across remote, isolated hill country. He was barefoot and bare-headed, with a great shock of white hair. He wore homespun clothes; accounts vary, but some say he wore a crimson linsey hunting jacket and linen trousers. None of these facts could be considered too unusual for the place and time. But the outcome of this journey had far-reaching and original results because this man was on no ordinary journey. He had heard talk of social work being done by a group of women from the level land, sponsored by the Kentucky Federation of Women's Clubs, and he wanted to observe their doings. But more than that, he wanted to enlist their aid in improving conditions in his home area if what he looked to find proved true. After watching the activities for hours in silence, he rose and introduced himself in something of the following manner: "Women, my name is Solomon Everidge. Some calls me the gran'daddy of Troublesome. Since I was a little shirttail boy hoeing corn on the hillsides, I have looked up Troublesome and down Troublesome for somebody to come in and lam us something. My childhood passed, and my manhood, and now my head is blooming for the grave, and still nobody hain't come. I growed up ignorant and mean, my offsprings was wuss, my grands wusser, and what my greats will be if something hain't done to stop the meanness of their maneuvers, God only knows. When I heard the tale of you women, I walked the twenty-two mile acrost the ridges to sarch out the truth of it. I am now persuaded you are the ones I have looked for all my lifetime. Come over on Troublesome, Women, and do for us what you are doing here." The "women" were deeply impressed by the earnestness and dignity of this patriarchal old man and agreed to come. And so what had begun primarily as a curiosity to see if conditions in the hills were as bad as had been reported, had turned into a desire to improve the conditions, especially those of women, and as William Aspenwall Bradley ("The Women on Troublesome," Scribner's, 1918) wrote "the first experiment in rural settlement work ever made in this country~or anywhere else in the world, for that matter." And at the request of Uncle Solomon Everidge the groundwork was laid for the first rural settlement school. The journey Uncle Solomon Everidge made that memorable day in midAugust of 1899 was from Hindman, Knott County, Kentucky, to Hazard, Perry County, Kentucky, and the school that resulted was the Hindman Settlement School. But it was mainly by the continued effort of Uncle Solomon that it did so. The following summer the "women" 10 A.F.S. (the "quare women," as they were locally called) came to Hindman and set up tents on a low point overlooking the town. "You gals ain't aimin' to live in them cloth houses, air ye?" a man inquired rather apprehensively. "Hit don't look like hit would be safe, no how, the way bullets comes a-flying around here sometimes." One morning a group of young men climbed the hill to the tents, some carrying rifles, some with revolvers in shoulder holsters. Their spokesman reported: "Uncle Solomon says you women hope to have a peaceful summer. Well, we fellers allowed we'd see you had peace, if it took steel bullets to get hit!" They acted as bodyguards throughout the summer. The program was so successful and well-received that the women were encouraged to return. At the end of the following summer at a mass meeting of local citizens the women were asked to return and set up a permanent school. When they replied that they had no money for such an undertaking and didn't know how to teach, the citizens volunteered money, work, timber, and Uncle Solomon said: "Go out and tell the world of our needs, get the money, and find teachers." In 1902 the school opened and at the...